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This monograph profiles the digitization efforts of eight North American university art, architecture, and design libraries. The following institutions are profiled in the report: Cornell University; University of Cincinnati; University of Houston; Washington State University; University of Manitoba; University of Florida; Santa Fe University of Art and Design; and University of Chicago.

“[Digitizing the university’s literary and arts journal] has been a huge success and has taken on a life of its own."–Bob Matuozzi, Humanities Bibliographer and Subject Sp

New York, New York (PRWEB)August 27, 2013

The interviews shed light on a wide range of programs and initiatives, exploring the challenges library heads have faced and the successes they have experienced in digitizing their collections. Interview subjects open up concerning their digitization endeavors, including what’s being digitized, and covering their experiences with commercial image collections such as ARTstor, the challenges of digitizing in-house against the prospect of outsourcing such work, potential licensing and copyright issues, marketing the library’s digital collections via social media, equipment and staff matters, priorities, and more. The results represent a broad spectrum of digitization efforts in art libraries today, from the newly-initiated to the well-seasoned veteran.

Just a few brief comments from report participants are:

“Digitizing the university’s literary and arts journal has been a huge success and has taken on a life of its own. It’s opened up the campus publication to be truly representative of the campus.”
–Bob Matuozzi, Humanities Bibliographer and Subject Specialist at Holland and Terrell Library, Washington State University

“... make sure you promote your collections as much as you can. Even if you’re busy and you think your collections are well used, you have to get them out to audiences.”
–Amanda Rybin, Associate Director of the Visual Resources Center at the University of Chicago

“Until we had a preservation repository in place, it didn’t make sense to embark heavily on digitization.”
–Danielle Mericle, Director of the Digital Media Group, Cornell University

“Before, they were digitizing just for the classroom. They weren’t creating archival images, and they weren’t cataloging. Now, we’re cataloging for the future, archival quality images. We try not to digitize anything unless it’s going to be added to our collection.”
–Elizabeth Meyer, Visual Resources Librarian at the Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning Library at the University of Cincinnati